Mobile phones and other electronic devices contain ever increasing content, with upgrades, equivalents, and other content created for them each year. Mobile phones, for example, store address books, user-generated content such as digital images, and third-party content such as ringtones, wallpaper, and music files, to name only a few types of content. Content is not easily restored when the phone is deactivated. It is difficult for a user to remember what content was stored on the phone, the correct version of the content for a particular phone, or even where she acquired the content. Even if she can discover all this information, the process of restoring content to the phone is still time-consuming, error prone, and tedious.
When restoring content to a phone, the user is also unaware of upgrades to content. Unknown to the user, a content provider may have released a new version of content or an equivalent, more popular version. The user misses an opportunity to get upgraded, more desirable content, and the content provider misses an opportunity to sell, license, or offer a subscription to new content.
Users face these same problems when upgrading to a new phone or other device. The new phone may require different versions of content: a simple transfer of content from the old to the new mobile phone will not work.